April Joy Lubaton, age 6 months, is weighed by medical assistants Elizabeth Silva and Lorena Salazar at the new Torrance Health and Wellness Center on Wednesday. The center is focused on serving lower-income families and at-risk youth. (Robert Casillas /Staff Photographer)

Two local health care programs have teamed up to offer at-risk and low-income residents integrated behavioral and medical health services at a single health center in Harbor Gateway.

A grand opening ceremony was held Wednesday for the Torrance Health and Wellness Center, which lauds itself as a one-stop shop for receiving psychotherapy, occupational therapy and psychiatry services along with primary medical care, immunizations, HIV testing, dental care and family planning.

Staff from South Bay Family Health Care, one of the county’s leading community clinics offering quality, low- and no-cost health care, and SSG’s Occupational Therapy Training Program join forces at the center, located at 19401 S. Vermont Ave.

The clinic is centered on a simple premise — mental and physical health are symbiotic.

“You can’t fix the physical if you don’t take care of the mental, emotional and spiritual. We can’t just treat the top of the iceberg, we have to treat the cause,” said Bernard Hardy, chief medical director of South Bay Family Health Care. “Most of the people having issues with diabetes and stuff like that have underlying psycho-social issues.”

Hardy noted that Los Angeles County has the highest risk of secondhand smoke exposure for youth, and the highest incidence of the young not getting immunizations.

Hardy and others said the center is located in an area in dire need of comprehensive health services.

“We have the most diverse population. We have kids whose parents, because of psycho-social situations, have mental instability, and the kids suffer emotional hurt,” Hardy said. “That impacts their compliance. They miss school, they don’t perform as well.”

Suzanne Afuso-Sugano, division director of OOTP, said the occupational therapy program has been in the Vermont Avenue location for many years, offering mental health services. But staff members were concerned that their patients might not be getting their primary health care needs met.

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“We were trying to get them to go to the doctor, and that might not be happening,” she said. “Because they’re familiar with our therapists and coming to (our clinic), they are more likely to come here.”

Konza Mitchell, clinical services manager of South Bay Family Health Care, said they have some patients who have never been to a doctor or received vaccines and they’re already 7 or 8 years old.

“We’ll probably see patients who have never been seen by a pediatrician,” she said. “Our goal is to see as many patients as we can and get all kids vaccinated.” The new center has a psychiatrist, primary care doctors, therapists, social workers and others on site to meet everyone’s needs.

In the sensory room, therapists will conduct a profile of children with behavioral problems to see if the behavior is tied to sensory problems.

In another room, clinical therapists offer parent-child interaction therapy. The parent and child in one room, a wall covered in double-sided glass, interact together while a therapist observing from behind a glass wall doles out advice and instructions in the parent’s earpiece. The therapy is targeted toward children with “extreme behavior” such as yelling, hitting and throwing toys.

The center also includes a clinical room, counseling rooms with large leather couches and even a large youth center down the hallway with a pool table, air hockey, full kitchen and a Wii.

The Health and Wellness Center accepts MediCal, Obamacare and private insurance. If a patient does not have insurance, they charge a $50 fee, Mitchell said. Currently, the new center will only offer primary care services to those 21 and under, but they hope to expand the medical services to adults soon. The behavioral and occupational therapy services are available for children and adults.

Hardy said he feels the creation of the center is a moral thing.

“This is something we have to do,” he said. “How we treat our people when they’re sick is a measure of what kind of society we are.”